Sunday, May 24, 2015

GOOD KILL: Struggling to Bring the Truth of Drone Killing Out of the Shadows

Ethan Hawke in Good Kill

I saw the movie Good Kill last night. I have five observations (below) but the most important thing I have to say is: anyone who cares about stopping drone killing should take a friend and go see this movie, and then do it again, and again. Here's why . . . .

(1) You can object to the frame of this movie -- US-centric, macho, militaristic -- but that's in fact where the public is starting from.

(2) "Good kill." Wait for the scene when the protagonist describe an attack on a home containing the "target" as well as the target's wife and children. And then the attack, hours later, on the funeral . . . .

(4) "Lawful orders." The movie is all about being a cog in a machine where all you do is follow someone else's orders, and your thinking is not welcomed. Any kid thinking about enlisting in order to break out of the world they're "stuck" in should see this movie. (See In Whose Machine Will YOU Be a Cog?)

Grounded raises tough questions. I was hoping that the
play would challenge the idea that killing people with drones is good.
It's a reflection of the seriousness of this work that that is just one
of the issues it raises; others include our society's willingness to
destroy the people who we employ to "serve" ("serve our country," serve
us in general), our culture's worship of violence / use of force, and
the consequences of pervasive surveillance.

In
Chicago on Good Friday, 2013 (March 29), a cast consisting of long-time
Chicago antiwar activists was joined by a NY playwright (and defendant
in actions against US drone bases), Jack Gilroy, for one of the events
kicking off a month-long campaign of anti-drones events across the
country: a performance of Gilroy's play, The Predator.

Eventually, in large part due to Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin,
the United States was converted from a country in which a small number
of people thought slavery needed to be ended into a country determined
to act to end slavery. This literary work took the movement wide, and it took it deep.